YouTube's Trends Map lets you see what the rest of the country is watching

Google has announced a new trends map for YouTube that will make it a whole lot easier to spot videos that are currently popular on the site. Although only covering the U.S. at the moment, in a blog post announcing the new feature Google asked users to stay tuned for updates, suggesting it might roll out for other areas in the future.

The map can be filtered by gender and age profiles, as well as total number of shares and views, with scrollable bars showing the number of regions in which a video has claimed the top spot. The new feature is actually an extension of Google's existing YouTube Trends dashboard, which also lets users search for popular videos using similar criteria, though not overlaid on a map.

For example, when filtering males aged between 13 and 17, a sketch from Family Guy - The Morgue from "Save The Clam" tops the trending list based on number of shares, while making a similar search for the 55-64 age group shows True Blood's season six teaser trailer is trending. The latter is also currently the most popular video when taking into consideration all age groups and genders.

You can take a look at what videos are trending in your area at the YouTube Trends Map site here.